All developers should drink more water

We have all heard this many times: “You should drink at least 1.5 liters of water a day”.

The main problem is that almost nobody drinks that much of water per day. During the years working as a software developer I have seen that especially developers don’t drink enough water.

Developers need to drink even more water than regular people. I have realized this by playing chess. After playing chess for an hour without a break, I started to feel really thirsty.

It seems that when our mind in on fire it needs more water.

 

 

water

 

My personal experience not drinking enough water

I have usually started a day with a cup of coffee. Coffee has diuretic effect – this means that it may cause the need to urinate.

When I do programming I am totally focused and concentrated on that and I don’t have the need for drinking water.

During my working hours I usually might have a glass of water with my lunch and maybe one after my second coffee.

Later in the evening I might have one after dinner.

It might look like that this is plenty, but actually it’s not nearly enough.

We do have one of these water machines in a hallway at work, but I almost never used it because it requires me to get up and walk away from my desk.

 

waterMachine

 

My Symptoms of Dehydration

After years not drinking of enough water I have started experiencing following symptoms:

  • My face started looking exhausted and old with more wrinkles.
  • I started having a poor digestion with experiencing slight pain in the liver when eating something difficult to digest.
  • I have also started to experiencing slight pain in the liver when drinking more that 2 small beers per day or when drinking more that 1 coffee per day.

It took me a long time to realize that my problems are directly related to dehydration. When I realized that, I decided to start experiment with drinking more water.

 

Dehidration

How much water should I drink a day

That is the first thing that crossed my mind. I started to Google and find out that I need to drink at least 1.5 liters of water a day.

As an experiment, I started to carry out 1 bottle of 0.75 lit of water to the work.
I bought this nice bottle I highly recommend.


KleenKanteen
Klean Kanteen bottle

I tried to force myself to drink more water.

Also, I started to drink a cup of green tea instead of coffee every morning.

 

My results

After 1 month I have realized that I am almost every day returning home half of the bottle. I didn’t feel the need to drink whole bottle.

After 6 months of doing this I have found that I have started to drink more that half of bottle per day. I started to feel better and my digestion was slightly improved.

 

 
I put 1 bottle every evening beside my bed and this was the turning point.

After started drinking water before sleep, I started to feel much better.

Today I drink a whole bottle of water at work.

My benefits of drinking more water

 

  • My face started to look fresh again
  • My digestion has improved (also related to more physical activity)
  • I feel better and have more energy
  • I lost some weight

Yes, it’s that time where I normally ask you to contribute with something. Leave a comment below and let me know if you had similar problems?

 

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13 Comments on All developers should drink more water

  1. Kristian Griffiths
    June 30, 2014 at 10:40 am (10 years ago)

    I was drinking more coffee than actual water every day and I was suffering from various issues. In my old office there was no contest between the nice coffee machine and the water cooler. This, however, was having a knock on effect on my sleep and on my digestion.
    Since moving jobs I now work in an office where it’s more hassle to get a coffee, so as a lazy person I go for the water cooler each time and I’ve noticed after a month and a half similar improvements in my overall health. I’m no longer as tired at work, I sleep better and my stomach no longer sounds like a growling dog all of the time. One knock-on effect form this is that the compulsion to chain-drink coffee is going away, so I’m no-longer missing it as much. I save the nice coffees for the weekend when I can appreciate them more.

    Reply
    • Radenko Zec
      June 30, 2014 at 12:06 pm (10 years ago)

      Hi Kristian. Great comment. I have also experienced negative effects of drinking too much coffee especially from espresso machines. I also recommend regular walks or running at least 5 times per week. Physical activity is very important to us, who spend more than 8 hours behind a desk.

      Reply
  2. Pete Smith
    July 10, 2014 at 4:39 pm (10 years ago)

    Definately going to give this a try…!

    Reply
    • Radenko Zec
      July 10, 2014 at 4:43 pm (10 years ago)

      Thanks for comment Pete. Try out to drink more water at least for month or two. Don’t expect results in few days. In first week or two you will need to push yourself to drink more water.

      Reply
  3. jitendra pathariya
    July 11, 2014 at 3:46 am (10 years ago)

    i think 1.5 ltr is much lesser then require (may be depend on country’s climate) but here in india older ppl and doctor advise to have at least 4-5 ltr water per day.. i am a software guy, and i used to have very less water i.e. 2 ltr..but then when i started facing problem i.e. digestive problem and some other (i.e. fissure etc) and contacted doctor then he told me to drink more and more water to overcome such issue..then i started drnking more water..now i fill my 1 ltr bottle 3-4 times at my workplace (avg 3 ltr per day), and at home i drink approx 2lt water per day..(over all 4-5 ltr )..and its working wonder..so my conclusion is..be it a developer or not..one should drink plenty of water

    Reply
    • Radenko Zec
      July 11, 2014 at 5:51 am (10 years ago)

      Here doctors recommend at least 2 ltr water per day. I never heard someone drinks more than 3 ltr per day very interesting info. Thanks for sharing.

      Reply
      • Armand Mey
        July 23, 2014 at 6:30 am (10 years ago)

        What Jitendra said is true, some places requires you to drink more water than other, since climate can have a huge effect on this, I know my dad who went to Mid-Africa could not survive with less than 6 litres of water, sometimes up to 10 litres because the climate was too much, and temperatures were way too hot, Basically he sweated out 2 litres of water in a couple of minutes because of the temperatures going over 50 degrees Celsius(122 degrees Fahrenheit), so it makes sense that some places does require more water than others 🙂

        Reply
  4. Nashid7
    July 21, 2014 at 3:43 pm (10 years ago)

    Doctor recommend to drink every day at least 2 litter water
    but if you drink milk , fruit juices and juice fruits then it is ok
    to drink less than 2 litter. I read your post it is great. Thanks to share it.

    Best products USA

    Reply
  5. Armand Mey
    July 23, 2014 at 6:32 am (10 years ago)

    This is a nice article, I will keep more water in mind, I was wondering why my concentration was flawing more and more, until I noticed I too was not drinking allot of water any-more, I think I will keep the water dispenser next to me 🙂

    Reply
    • Radenko Zec
      July 23, 2014 at 6:45 am (10 years ago)

      Hi Armand.Thanks for sharing your experience.

      Reply
  6. Mahesh Nagar
    December 2, 2014 at 4:17 am (9 years ago)

    Nice post but make sure don’t drink water after lunch/dinner for min 30 mins . I used to drink lot of water then problem of frequency of urinate increase drastically. N so stupid I am not even understand what was my problem then I went under medical treatment n they suggested me to decrease water intake . Problem get resolved but after lot of observation found problem was having water just after lunch/dinner

    Reply
    • Radenko Zec
      December 2, 2014 at 6:45 am (9 years ago)

      Hey Mahesh. Great tip.
      I will try it for a few days.

      Reply
  7. Howard Jess
    September 30, 2015 at 7:34 am (8 years ago)

    Drink when you’re thirsty. Our bodies (and thirst sensors) have evolved over millennia, and do an effective job balancing our water intake / outflow.

    Or did something change in the last dozen years?

    Reply

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